Proving a Medical Malpractice Case

People often think that just because a doctor made an error there will be a good medical negligence case. That’s not necessarily correct. There are three elements to a medical malpractice case, negligence, causation and injury.

The Elements Of Proof

The first element is negligence which is also defined as the breach or violation of the standard of care applicable to that doctor and for that patient’s condition. The second is causation. In other words, the negligence or carelessness or breach of standard of care must cause some injury. The third is damages or losses as a result of those injuries.

Negligence

Medicine is not an exact science like mathematics. In some cases there are unintended consequences that accompany a medical procedure. Those unintended consequences may not be the result of any carelessness, but may be simply a complication of the procedure that’s a recognized complication. This is unfortunate for that particular patient, but nevertheless not due to any bad medical care.

To prove negligence we have to demonstrate that there was some mistake, there was carelessness, there was a breach of the standard of care. Sometimes people look to the result and think, well I went in for operation A and I had no idea that I would end up with problem B and therefore there must be something wrong. This is not necessarily so. It could just be that despite the best medical care, the complication occurred.

Causation

Sometimes there can be a clear case of negligence that does not result in a valid medical malpractice claim. For instance, if a doctor prescribed the wrong medication or a medication that the doctor would have known you were allergic to but the medication does not cause injury. To have a case the error must cause an injury. In a failure to timely diagnose a cancer case, one of the standard questions is, “Did the delay make a difference?”

Damage Caps

If you or I cause someone a very serious catastrophic injury or death our responsibility to that person and that person’s family is whatever a jury says it is. With medical negligence cases, that’s not the case. There is a legislatively imposed cap on the amount of certain types of damages that doctors are responsible for no matter how careless or how obvious that their carelessness caused an injury or how serious the injury may be.